The Italian Theater

By C. T.

THE golden age of the Italian theater was the eighteenth century, the era of Alfieri, Metasfasio and Goldoni. The so-called “bourgeois theater" of the nineteenth century was quantitatively productive but larked originality, dominated as it was by foreign, especially French, influences.But toward the end of the century, the flamboyant Gabriele D’Annunzio (18641938) brought new life to the Italian stage with his striking “dramatic poems,”such as The Daughter of Jorio.Sem Benelli (1875—1949), the author of The Jester’s Supper, was also successful on a more popular level. These two writers had many imitators, whose talents were mediocre. The same might be said of the “grotesque theater" as well as the “intimate theater" of this period.

One of the most influential figures in world theater in the early years of the present century was the Sicilian, Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), who revolution ized the stage with his new techn iques. Pirandello’s novel themes — and the bitter humanity of his dramatizations of metaphysical problems — brought him a world-wide audience and the Nobel Prize in 1934. His As You Desire Me and Six Characters in Search of an Author are still being produced in many lauds.

The next among our dramatists to achieve international recognition was Ugo Betti (1892-1953), a judge in Rome, whose plays osedlate between a powerful idealism inspired by Ibsen and a pessimistic realism. More spontaneous, even though often tied to the traditional motifs of the commedia dell’arte, is the Neapolitan-dialect theater of the De Filippo brothers, who act in their own plays. Diego Fabbri’s Jesus on Trial has been performed all over Europe.

In recent years, the interest of the Italian theater public has turned abroad. Adaptations of English, Russian, French, German, and, above all. American plays have proven extremely popular, there have been first-rate productions of the most important works of Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams, well staged by such directors as Luchino Visconti, Giorgio Strehler, and Luigi Squarzina, to name only a few.

It is difficult to explain the present dearth of major creative talent in the Italian theater. If may be that the energies of our most gifted writers are being channeled into the more remunerative field of the motion pictures. Certainly this is true among actors. The great names of the early part of the century — Eleonora Duse, Ruggero Ruggeri, Ermete Zacconi, Emma Gramatica, Gualtiero Tumiati — have not been replaced by new ones of equal luster. Nowadays young actors must learn their technique in schools, which, with their overemphasis on theory, are no substitute for working in repertory with great artists.

Economic crises, high production costs, and the competition from the cinema, and now television, have weakened the Italian theater, in spite of the subsidies granted, in a somewhat haphazard fashion, by the State. The loyal theater public of the past has disappeared. Today, it takes the publicity of a big hit to bring the crowds into our theaters.

C.T.